Narratives of Class in Indonesian TV Commercials
Ratna Noviani

Class is often inscribed in advertising imagery. Advertisements produce and reproduce distinctive markers to signify class subjects and class relations. This study is concerned with the way in which class distinctions are represented in Indonesian television advertisements. Desires of social climbing and class-passing, which are expressed in the studied advertisements by involving the notion of gender, have gained particular consideration. It has been demonstrated that advertising narratives in Indonesia were driven by a middle class perspective. Codes of masculinity and femininity are also differently functionalized by the advertisements to narrativize class distinctions.